Introduction

The Declaration of Independence
of the United States in 1776 did not mean a sudden hiatus in social and cultural
development. The trend toward a distinctive American way of life had begun during
the Colonial period. Nevertheless, the creation of an independent body politic was
such a concrete event that it provoked an additional stimulus to the quest for a
distinctive identity.
It is no wonder then that the American historians have paid a
lot of attention to the decades following the American
Revolution. Many historians regard the early 19th century as the
most important and crucial period in the cultural history of the
United States, on the grounds that this era represented for the
U.S. the opportunity to shape its political, economic, cultural
and social future free from external pressure. Henry F. May, for
instance, argues that if a distinct American culture can be said
to exist, then it was during this period that it took shape.

The point of departure in these kinds of interpretations has
continuously been the problem of national identity. Was the
United States a nation or only a loose coalition of various
people and landscapes? Which were the factors that shaped
American nationalism and American mentality? Or, which were the
factors aiming at sectionalism? I give you only two examples,
which are somewhat opposite to each other.

First, Russel Blaine Nye
has identified four factors in the post-independence decades
which provided the basis for the evaluation of a distinctive
American culture. In the 1960s and 1970s he published two
influential books on early American culture and society where
his ideas can be detected and which have been very useful also
for this paper.

The first two factors in Nye's "system" operate in the temporal
dimension. First of all, the leaders of the American republic
were aware of their past: of the fact that the United States was
a product of a long process of development, English in the first
instance, but also, on a more general plane, European.
Thomas Jefferson saw Europe as
a teacher, from whose past (both in its good and bad aspects)
Americans could learn to understand their own past. History was
not seen as a burden, but as an aid to the new history, that is
to the future.

The emergence of an original Americanism can be understood more
clearly in terms of Nye's second factor, the attitude toward the
future. The Americans' positive view of the future rested on the
assumption that their society, and its members, were superior to
the rest of the world. This thinking was based on the values of
the new industrializing, embourgeoising, secularizing society in
which activities were directed towards a constant improvement of
the standard of living. In certain areas, however, such as
intellectual culture, a temporary state of inferiority was
recognized, but this was assumed to be bound to disappear in the
course of time. Their superiority was seen by the Americans
themselves as deriving from the dynamism of their society, which
unlike the European nations had never had to endure feudalism
and were free from the class boundaries. Moreover, it was
believed that this way of life ought to be spread to other
nations. Thus the American authorities adopted a sense of
mission during the very first decades of their history as an
independent nation.

The next two factors in Nye's approach operate in space: in
horizontal (and geographical) terms the relationship to Europe
was crucial. Naturally, the value judgment depended on the
measuring rod chosen. For the majority (or, the average
American) view the most common criteria included democracy,
individual freedom, or moral questions, while the cultural
minority emphasized intellectual achievements which could not
match the long European tradition.

The fourth factor was powerfully trans-atlantic as well, but in
more concrete terms. Heavy emigration in the post-Napoleonic
period from Europe made America a multi-ethnic nation and
contributed strongly to the nature of American nationalism.
Connected to this, the frontier of settlement which was steadily
moving further west was also a crucial explanatory factor both
in the Americans' life and their Americanism.

Nye's analysis ends in a summary. He concludes that these four
features led to a unique combination of unity and pluralism in
American society: everyone was in theory equal, yet the
individual, and individual freedom, also provided a
counterweight to the majority. Not only the individual, but
equally the group, was of importance. Both for culture and other
forms of human activity, these were factors which provided the
tone of the American intellectual atmosphere, and a tension
between majority and minority aspirations on the direction of
the American national identity.

Robert M. Crunden
published his American cultural history in
1990 and looks at American history differently from Russel
Blaine Nye. Crunden does not place himself in the situation of
the early 19th century Americans, but makes his conclusions
retrospectively. According to him, the American history can be
understood from the point of view of religion, capitalism and
democracy. Thus for Crunden, spirit, economy and political and
social equality explain the American history in its entirety .
Crunden concludes that before 1815 Americans perceived their
mentality locally, in several separate centers on the Eastern
seaboard. The second phase lasted until 1901 and was a time of
regionalism and sectionalism (North, South, West). Nationalism
was the most important ideology only during the first four
decades of the 20th century, after which the Americans have
belonged to the cosmopolitan, global world, Crunden writes.